How Crazy Are Your Customers?

2025, February, 03

customer journey, customer experience, humor, transformation, innovation

man with balloons0001

What happens when your customers start to use your products in completely unexpected, unintended ways, taking creative control of their utility? You should just let them go crazy and observe. Afterall, their exploration of the absurd may just lead you to discover completely new market spaces worth pursuing.

One extreme example of such product use deviation is the story of Larry Walters, a truck driver who gained instant celebrity status in 1982, when one afternoon of heightened curiosity or boredom, he attached 45 weather balloons to his lawn chair, lifted off, and quickly ascended to a height of 16,000 ft (nearly 5,000 meters). After drifting around in the sky for a while, he got cold, shot some of the balloons with a BB gun he was carrying, and started to descend. On his way down he got in the way of commercial aircraft landing at Los Angeles airport and crashed into some power lines.

In this case, Larry was clearly not satisfied with the more banal and conventional use of a lawn chair, and took it upon himself to transform it into a cockpit. And in the process, he pioneered an entirely new, possible direction and market opportunity for the lawn chair industry: recreational flying machines.

#customerexperience #humor #designthinking #innovation #transformation

Kudos to Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart

Congratulations to Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart, who were inducted into The Songwriters Hall of Fame last month and will be inducted into The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in November, for their indelible contributions to pop music.

Dave and I connected when he was a guest on my radio show series, and I found him to be a fearless, cultural innovator. We shared a profound conversation around the thrill of continuously pursuing new frontiers and incessantly harnessing our childhood sense of creativity. There was also a funny moment when I called Dave at a scheduled time, and he was still talking with Mick Jagger on the other line.

My favorite quote from the conversation, which made it to the back cover of my Slingshot book:

“Slingshot is like looking at things through the other end of a telescope.” – Dave Stewart

#eurythmics #music #rock&roll #innovation #popculture #creativity
The Un-Carrier: T-Mobile disrupts U.S. mobile telecom
An industry disruptor is one that shakes up an industry by challenging taken for granted assumptions and rules of competition. It is able to disrupt and reshape an industry by delivering tangible value focused on the needs of customers, while the incumbent industry players are focused on trying to outcompete each other.
Theatre of the absurd continued: Giant space umbrella
Following up on my story last week about GE’s big idea for using CO2 emissions, let’s continue with another seemingly wacky, repurposing concept again this week. How about a giant space umbrella to solve the problem of global warming?
Companies with the best sense of humor
At the start of this month was arguably the most important date of the annual corporate calendar. It was none other than April 1st, aka April Fools Day. Humor is one of the most universal manifestations of creativity, which is the central fuel for future-shaping companies. Not surprisingly, more and more organizations worldwide are embracing humor as a core cultural dimension, and we see an exponential, global proliferation from year to year of companies commemorating April Fools’ Day, the annual celebration of laughter and childlike fun. These organizations conceive of and bring to life farcical campaigns on April 1st, signaling to all internal and external constituents that they, as an organization, have a sense of humor and appreciate levity.
Africa Rising

I am looking forward to be in Accra, Ghana next week, for the Africa Rising Conference. The event is organized by the International Advertising Association, in partnership with Google, CNN, Nedbank, and MTN:

http://africarising.iaaglobal.org/

My presentation will be on the enticing topic of 'The Magical Bridge between Brands and People', and promises to be a highly interactive and thought-provoking session.

Interesting Fact: Did you know that Ghana was the first African country below the Sahara to gain its independence?

#innovation #leadership #transformation #smartstrategy #sustainability
Repackaging Customer Pain as Motivation

At the heart of the Slingshot Framework is the premise of always identifying customer pain points and transforming them into points of delight and infatuation. The continuous pursuit of such transformation is what creates irresistible offerings.

Here is an interesting and humorous twist on this process. The Manuscript Writing Café in Tokyo only caters to writers on a deadline, and does not let them leave until their work is finished. Customers can select the level of pressure they will be subjected to by the staff, for example choosing an "S" treatment means that they will be pressured aggressively to complete their work, while "M" represents a milder level of anxiety and less frequent monitoring of their progress.

In essence, the café is replacing the customer pain point of procrastination with another pain point, that of coercion. This is seemingly a welcome substitution of pain by their target audience because it provides them the necessary motivation to ultimately reach their desired point of joy: That of completing their work.

To learn more about the café: https://grapee.jp/en/199026

#motivation #customerexperience #marketinnovation #cafe #customerjourney #innovation
Children’s imagination building city of the future
Once, Thomas Edison was asked by a reporter: “Mr. Edison, you being the world’s greatest inventor, what you do you think is the greatest invention?” He replied without hesitation: “The greatest invention in the world is the mind of a child.”
Grain of Sand on Your Finger

A really exciting event from this summer - buried amidst all the negative news - was the publication of the first space image from NASA’s James Webb telescope. President Biden personally released the photo on July 12^th during a White House press conference, showing the furthest image of space ever taken.

The picture displays a small, highly magnified portion of the Universe teeming with thousands of galaxies. To me, the most fascinating part of the story was how an article in Nature described the scale of the image:

“It shows thousands of distant galaxies in the constellation Volans, fainter than any galaxies seen before, in a patch of sky no larger than that covered by a grain of sand held at arm’s length.” https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01906-6

How amazing is that? Hold out your hand and picture a grain of sand on your finger. A speck that tiny contains thousands of galaxies in the sky. The comparison really provides a palpable sense of the enormity of our universe. It's really mind- bending.

Related Fun Fact: Did you know that our galaxy is moving through space at a blistering 1.3 million miles per hour (2.1 million km/hr). Just remember this when you are hesitant on embarking on a new adventure. Standing still is NOT an option!

#space #exploration #inspiration #future #technology
Intellectual Wellness

Intellectual Wellness is defined as "recognizing one's creative abilities and finding ways to expand knowledge and skills" by Northwestern University, and as "being open to new ideas, thinking critically and finding ways to be creative" by the University of New Hampshire.

More and more academic institutions are offering programs in Intellectual Wellness, and Newsweek did an exposé on it in March, 2022 entitled "How to Expand Your Skills for a Happier Life".

Undeniably, the focus of Intellectual Wellness is highly relevant for the post-pandemic world. And, it provides a perfect podium for the Slingshot Framework - which is the definitive guide to continuously re-imagining boundaries. Here is sneak peek:

What if you could reignite your childhood creativity in a systematic way, to overstep self-imposed limitations and to discover what you are really capable of achieving? It’s all at your fingertips. Apply the Slingshot Framework to defy conventional wisdom and unleash your imagination for success in your business and your life.

Are you ready to to maximize your intellectual wellness?
Are you ready to grab your slingshot?

#wellness #intellectualwellness #creativity #lifelonglearning #leadership #innovation
Homage to Greatness

I am currently in Montreal, having led a session at the Women Presidents Organization annual conference. My visit happened to coincide with the national funeral for hockey icon Guy Lafleur.

The ceremony is taking place at Mary Queen of the World Cathedral in downtown Montreal, right next to my hotel. This pic is from my hotel room at the moment Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau arrived.

Lafleur, called ‘the blond demon’ was described as a "Jackson Pollock painting on ice, a frenetic innovator who pushed the boundaries of his art beyond what had ever been conceived, a singularly dynamic force that turned an everyday sight as simple as a man on skates with a puck on his stick into a masterpiece — something you had seen before, perhaps, but never quite like that".

#hockey #lafleur #innovation #leadership

How Crazy Are Your Customers?

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